Numerous upgrades to MVS mobile are complete!

Post by **matthew1** » 28 Aug 2015, 15:25

Just go to this site in your phone or tablet.

Because I can't check all devices, please let me know if there are errors or omissions. You can either leave them here in this topic, or email them to me [email protected].

Same with features - if you'd like to see something on MVS mobile that's not there. After all, it is a subset of the features available to the desktop browser.

Thanks for using MVS!

Post by **precopster** » 28 Aug 2015, 17:07

https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums ... hp?t=71601
1997 850 How VVIS works?

Hi Matthew. Last night I posted a You Tube link in the last post of this thread. After posting the video was there with a preview pic. This morning it has vanished though the link typing is still there. I'm running Android 5.

Post by **matthew1** » 28 Aug 2015, 18:09

Hi Mike, and thanks for your post. I think Ozark Lee edited your post in that topic about 3 hours ago to make the video "inline", rather than just a link... having said that, does the problem persist for you?

I looked at it in iOS Safari and Chrome, and the video and post look ok.

Post by **precopster** » 29 Aug 2015, 16:40

In Android 5 Tapatalk the link and preview pic are not there for the You Tube video. Sorry I should have mentiomed that it was Tapatalk I was using and not a browser in Android 5.

My own Tapatalk version is 5.1.1

Post by **matthew1** » 29 Aug 2015, 17:55

Oh Tapatalk... I don't support it any longer. https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums ... rt#p294197

Essentially, they republish what's here, and take the lion's share of the ad revenue. It's just bad business for me. For them, it's great.

If Tapatalk is giving you problems, please try MVS in a mobile browser... that's what I'm referring to by saying MVS mobile.

Post by **precopster** » 30 Aug 2015, 14:46

That's a shame because essentially it has a great interface and very easy to use. I recently upgraded my phone and in this latest version of Tapatalk I noticed that multiple photos in posts are now allowed without the need to pay for an upgrade . Also they place ads indiscriminately which look like posts however they're identifiable by a different colouring.

Perhaps they've overcome the ad revenue issue by placing their own ads. Worth a revisit perhaps Matthew?

Post by **matthew1** » 30 Aug 2015, 15:37

Mike, I'd be putting a fair portion of MVS into the hands of Tapatalk. They'd become the gatekeepers. (And for the smaller percentage of MVS users using MVS through Tapatalk, already are.)

Off the top of my head, the number of users using MVS mobile is at least 20X that of Tapatalk.

I don't know what an analogy would be for the real world... perhaps having a corner store, say a small grocery, and turning it over to another entity to run. They'd get half the profits, but they'd make it prettier, and have a faster checkout system.

What I'm trying to do with MVS mobile is make it pretty/faster without turning it over to anyone.

I don't have the resources to write my own phone app, or I'd do it. (Or maybe I do, and I just need to spend some time looking into how easy or difficult it would be, what the cost/benefit would be.)

Tapatalk is quite seductive for forums who don't have the resources to create their own mobile version. Three years ago when it came around it seemed like a nice stopgap measure to aid MVS users. But now it's not looking so hot.

For the record, I've emailed them twice in that three years to get information about Tapatalk itself, to discuss with someone there what their roadmap is, but they failed to respond both times. It gave me pause about going further with them.

Having said that, I'd like to know what I can do with MVS mobile to make it work as well as Tapatalk. I want you and the few dozen other Tapatalk users to continue to use MVS. What I don't want to do is work to get MVS fully compatible with Tapatalk (they require me to re-write how MVS works to do so), when I could be using that time to work on MVS mobile, which has no restrictions -- namely a $2.99 app, and a phone modern enough to run that app.

Tapatalk is a closed system, and I'd rather put effort into MVS mobile which works on the oldest of smartphones, including my first generation iPhone (2007), because all you need is a browser.

Tapatalk downsides:
_closed, private system
_they control ad revenue
_not good at support
_roadmap unknown

The last one is especially problematic... what if they one day drop support for phpBB, and suggest all forums move to vBulletin? Or what if they push out an update to their app that crashes it when browsing MVS? (MVS's phpBB software is heavily modified from stock.) MVS is the vast majority of my income, and I have a kid to feed. I've got to be careful.

Putting my eggs in the Tapatalk basket is too unpalatable. But like I mentioned above, give me feedback on what Tapatalk does that MVS mobile doesn't, and I'll do my best to change that. I'm not averse to working hard to make users happy.

Post by **precopster** » 01 Sep 2015, 04:48

Hey Matthew no big deal. I always thought that Tapatalk users were quite a majority for mobile use which is not what you've found.

The Tapatalk interface has limitations such as not showing the poster's car model, and also not showing any signature at all, so this made posting in response to a first time poster sometimes ambiguous and frustrating.

Tapatalk's ability to add pics is very good without needing to browse the DCIM directory for the preview picture. Of course swapping forums is just a rearward swipe of the "back" key on Android. Screen size limits mobile browsers and some cope with browsing better than others.

On Android, Chrome will zoom into a username/password area by default however IE does not. I'm not familiar with Safari's or Mozilla's capabilities on mobile platforms.